Chris,
> I was thinking a pg_export utility that can output to a range of other
> databases SQL formats would also be a good idea. It would share about
> 90% of the pg_dump code, but I'm trying to think of how to avoid
> duplicating the code.
I'm not really keen on this idea unless you're eager to make a 5-year
commitment to maintain the code. The load formats of other RDBMSes change
all the time -- MySQL is a particularly egregious example, with 2
incompatible changes in the last year -- and it would become a pain to keep
track.
More to the point, there are a number of 3rd-party OSS and proprietary
utilities which can do this kind of format conversion. For example, Perl
DB::Interpolator will cover PG, MySQL, Oracle and MSSQL once that
functionality is out of beta.
I can see, though, having a --strict-sql switch for pg_dump which would dump
all database objects in strict SQL92, which should be pretty compatible with
other systems. This should also be easier to implement and trivial to
maintain. Though it would mean not dumping functions and doing a few data
type conversions.
--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco